Alternate Location Restore of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 (mailbox recovery)

Please read this article before starting the recovery procedure (to an alternate Exchange Server).

To perform a successful restore to an alternate location (different server) several conditions must be met:

• You can perform recovery on individual databases and storage groups or on all databases on a particular server. The recovery server must be installed in a different Active Directory (AD) forest than the original server.

NOTE: The target Exchange server for the restore must be the same version and service pack as the Exchange server that was backed up.

• The Organization Configuration, the Server Configuration, the Recipient Configuration, the Storage groups and their mailbox databases, and the file locations must be the same as on the original server.

By default, the installation of Exchange 2007 server creates the mailbox and public folder stores. These are called Mailbox Database, and Public Folder Database.

NOTE: Make sure the recovery server has the same Mailbox Database names and Public Folder Database names as the original server. You can rename the stores using Exchange Management Console: Right-click on each database and select Properties. If the location of the database directories and log file directories is not the same as on the original server, change it here. Right-click on each store and select Move Storage Group Path.

• The recovery server must have an account member of the administrative group that exists on the DS-Client computer. You can either create an account on the recovery server, or you can create an account on the DS-Client computer that matches the name and password of the administrator account.

• The DS-Client computer should resolve the fully qualified domain name of the recovery server. Since the recovery server will be on a different Domain (different AD), you can set the DS-Client NIC’s DNS settings to point to the recovery server. (Do not forget to change it back to the original settings once the restore is completed.)

• Dismount all the stores. Right click on each store and locate the database locations. Using Windows Explorer, delete all the files from these directories. In step 2, you made the location of the database and logs the same; if you have AD users with mailboxes, you may have to delete these mailboxes. Using Exchange Management Console under Recipient Configuration right click on the users, and select Remove.

1. Delete all logs using Windows Explorer. Mount all the stores. Ignore the warning for the missing database files and click Yes. If you get any errors mounting the databases, resolve them before going further.

2. Right click on each mailbox database or public folder database, select Properties and click General. Select This database can be overwritten by a restore.

• Once the above conditions are met, you can start the restore from DS-User. In the restore wizard, change the location from Original location to Alternate location, and click >>. Browse and select the recovery server. Select Ask for network credentials. Once you have selected the server, double click on it or click Select. Enter a user name and a password. Use the same one from step 3 above. Keep all the other settings unchanged and click Finish.

NOTE: If you get errors during the restore, it is likely that some of the conditions (1 to 5 above) were not met. Once the restore is completed without errors you can perform a mailbox recovery if you want.

1. Create an Active Directory user account, but do not mailbox-enable the user account. None of the naming for the account needs to match the account that was previously linked to the mailbox.

2. Using Exchange Management Shell, connect the mailbox database you want to recover to the user account that you just created in AD.